Friday, 20 November 2015

In my KS3 Toolkit book for the GA, "Look at it this Way", there was an activity called 'First Class Landscapes' which explored the design of stamps to show a future landscape.
Since then, plenty of stamp sets have emerged, and we are now about to have a really nice looking set of coastal landscapes.

The introduction discusses an injunction by Georges Perec to ‘see more flatly’ (wryly apt considering the landscape being seen), and the pieces do try to look beyond official accounts of place to draw on tiny concrete details, lived experience, historical perspective, technical boating matters, economics, and so on and so forth. Of course, unless you note everything, the very act of selecting details unflattens them, making (to mix my spatial metaphors horribly) salient features out of what had been background trifles. Similarly, the alphabetical ordering of the pieces is a way of insisting on the ‘non-hierarchical’ approach; I think Matless wouldn’t object if you read them in a random order, as if you were yourself wandering around the Broads, making your own way.

Matless is a geographer, and the introduction does frame the pieces as ‘geographical descriptions,’ but anyone coming to the discipline without a prior knowledge of cultural geography would be amazed by the lack of a ‘neutral’/’objective’ voice, lack of argumentative rigour and even of argument, and lack of traditional academic apparatus such as referencing. Of course, the move away from that rather chimerical lifebelt is one of the characteristic and exciting features of the contemporary cultural geographer.

Monday, 3 August 2015

I've been sent a link to a survey which I hope you might be able to help with.

My name is Kate Wayland and I'm currently studying Geography (BSc) at Staffordshire University. As part of my degree I have designed my own dissertation project which equates to 1/4 of my final year.

My passion for Geography greatly influences the areas I visit in my spare time. I prefer to visit landscapes that are geologically diverse (landscapes with lots of cool rocks in!). I am interested in what people like about the landscapes they visit and in particular the general public appreciation of geodiverse landscapes. Amongst other things I've designed this survey to figure out:

- what things attract people to a landscape?

- do people appreciate geodiverse landscapes?

- what sort of people like geodiverse landscapes?

Hopefully with this information I can suggest suitable ways to encourage people to enjoy Britain's geodiverse landscapes even more.

If you wish to lend me a hand and contribute to my final project by taking part in my survey then the link is attached below. It should take 10-15 minutes to complete. Also, the information you share with me will not be passed on to any third parties and will be used solely for the purpose of this dissertation project.

Friday, 10 July 2015

Sunday, 5 July 2015

Summer holidays are here, when I will be getting ready for the next year, when we will be teaching the Adventure Landscapes topic again. This is a great topic, and will offer a lot of options for us to teach about landscapes and our relationships with them.

Saturday, 14 March 2015

I went to UEA earlier in the week to see Robert MacFarlane in conversation, discussing and reading from his book Landmarks. It was part of the Norwich Literacy Festival.

I've blogged about the book previously with an early review, and also the long association with Robert's work and Geography since 2003 and 'Mountains of the Mind'. I've used it as inspiration for a number of projects over the years.

It was a chance to hear Robert read from the book, and talk about his personal inspirations and the process of creating it, starting with a trip to Lewis and the discovery of a glossary of peat moorland terms.
The section he read has an important message about landscape and the difficulty of writing about it, particularly when it was so apparently uniform.

There was also a reminder of the phrase mamba, which I've used before ...

I didn't take notes but preferred to listen. As Robert said, if he was to take notes while on trips that would be a barrier between him and the landscape, although memory could also be a barrier.

A few things that stood out.
a) he was asked about the political nature of environmental writing, with links to the work of Marion Shoard, and Oliver Rackham also getting a mention. He said: "my direct action is my teaching and writing..."
b) he talked about his work with school aged students through the charity Action for Conservation
c) he developed some of the ideas in the final chapter of the book about the language of children, which he called 'Childish' in the same way as 'English' - the way that young people experience the landscape is obviously something that is very much connected with the teaching of geography with young people
d) lots of praise for J.A.Baker's 'The Peregrine' - I imagine a lot of people will read the book as a result.
e) He described the link between language and landscape.Reminds me of the title of something I wrote for the Ordnance Survey in 2009.

He talked about his favourite words being hummadruz and also a Gaelic phrase describing the shadow of moving clouds on the landscape...

He also closed with a reading from Landmarks describing a trip down a tunnel. His next book is going to be
about the underground landscapes beneath our feet.

Saturday, 7 March 2015

An
initial ‘review’ of a book I've been looking forward to for some time...

Robert
MacFarlane’s books have appeared on this blog
regularly since it started, and featured in numerous teacher CPD sessions, and
lessons with my students.

I’ve been looking forward to the latest
book as it continues the exploration of landscape and the way that it is
described in words that was a feature of previous books.

Regular readers will know that I used ‘The
Old Ways’ and ‘The Living Mountain’ as a way of exploring the Cairngorms and developing mapskills
using Digimap for Schools at the SAGT Conference a few years ago. I’ve also referenced books such as
‘Mountains of the Mind’ in my KS3 landscapes toolkit book ‘Look at it this
Way’.

Landmarks starts by explaining that it is a book about “the power of language…. to shape
our sense of place”.

Chapters on different types of ‘lands’ are
interspersed with entries from what is called the ‘word hoard’: a collection of
dialect words for landscape features, or for ephemeral relationships between
the landscape and weather conditions or other external factors. Some are
familiar, many are not, and make you want to go and seek them out.

As I’ve read the book, I’ve made many
connections with my own travelling and reading over the years.

1.The removal of nature words
from the Oxford dictionary and their ‘replacement’ with technology words –
mentioned this a few weeks ago, and it connects with our work to get young people
outside through Mission:Explore.

2.The influence of Barry Lopez. I first read ‘Arctic
Dreams’ in 1987, ten years before Robert came across him while in Canada (I was
in Hull at the time) – I agree that he is the greatest nature writer, and he
also mentions the book that Lopez edited called ‘Home Ground: language for an
American landscape’, which is a great book. I’ve read everything Lopez has
published and he never disappoints. I used one section as an influence for a
book I wrote a few years ago, and he also comes into my current writing.

3.A mention for Tim Robinson’s
incredible explorations in miniature of the islands off the coast of Ireland –
another sequence I explored many years ago., after returning from visiting the
area

4.A mention for Jaquetta Hawke’s
‘The Land’ which was something I used in my teaching back in the 1990s. This is
a book unlike any other…

5.Homage paid to Hugh Miller for
helping him to get ‘trilobite sight’ and understand geological time and how it
changed the landscape. Last summer I was involved in preparing resources for,
and building the website and social media surrounding a recreation of Hugh
Miller’s voyage in ‘The Betsey’. A 2nd voyage is planned for the
summer of 2015, continuing the journey that Miller made

6.The glossary is full of books I
read as a child or young adult, when I devoured books about landscapes and
climbing. MacFarlane is describing, very often, my own experiences with those
books, but he has the skill to articulate what I never did… These include the
books of ‘BB’, Susan Cooper’s ‘The Dark is Rising’ sequence (still one of my
very favourite books), Ronald Blythe, Roger Deakin, Tim Dee and the late Oliver
Rackham.

All of these books sit on my shelves right now, and I look forward
to having time to reacquaint myself with them.

7.Another mention of course for John Muir, and our special John Muir
trust version of Mission:Explore has had over 200 000 ‘views’ apparently we
heard this week.

8.Images are missing from the
book – perhaps deliberately when it is a book about words, but I can see the
landscapes that are mentioned, almost all of which I’ve also visited in my
head, and also have pictures of them. Some of those I submitted to the OS PhotoFit competition. What better
feeling would there be to see one of your own images on an Ordnance Survey map
for thousands to buy and hold in their hand as they explore that part of
Britain?

There are too many wonderful moments and
vignettes to capture here, and I recommend that you get hold of a copy. I may
well add the occasional ‘Landscape word of the day’ here for a while to keep
the connection back to the book…

I am
going to be seeing Robert talk about the book next week at the University of
East Anglia, and will be adding my notes and observations from that next week.

Finally, in today's Guardian, I loved this cartoon by Tom Gauld which affectionately parodies the word-hoard to provide some additions, in the style of another old favourite of mine, from over 30 years ago now, and co-written by Douglas Adams: 'The Meaning of Liff'....

My current view from the window includes what Suffolk residents would call a grout...